My Good Time at the HarnArt is cool

This is Geographies by Celeste Roberge. As far as materials go, Roberge intrigued me the most in the museum. Using steel, lead, stones, wire, solder, and hair, she managed to create geological implicities, primary themes in a lot of Roberge's work. Horizontal and vertical dimensions delineate a reference to latitude and longitude. These objects are also egg-shaped, implying fecundity.

This piece made me feel really in touch with my womanhood. My biological proclivities bring me close and at the forefront with nature, probably more often than I would like. These neat, designated shells of materials portrayed this feeling well.

Me with Geographies by Celeste Roberge. 1986.

Intra-Action: Women Artists from the Harn Museum was the exhibit that most fascinated me at the museum that fateful Friday afternoon. With over 70 pieces of work by 36 different female artists, this exhibit portrayed many themes that spoke closely to me and many others. The work ranged from mid-twentieth century pieces all the way to today. The space was open, inviting, and had tall ceilings. A film was on replay in an enclosed space in the middle of the exhibit. The muffled sound from the film gave the exhibit a whole new dimension in comparison with the other relatively quiet wings.

The lighting and the space were intricately clean. White walls and ceilings with wooden floors especially appealed to my minimalist aesthetic. I find it confusing and overwhelming when exhibits choose bright colors to background the art. I believe this is the purest way to observe pieces.

A selfie with the exhibit and design of the exhibition I cared most about in the museum

This piece 100% represents my core values. Bourgeois has been one of my favorite artists since I began studying art at age 16. She is edgy, simplistic, and avoids over-emphasis. Made in 2004, Ode a L'Oubli is a hand-sewn book of stitched cloth with lithography. Basic shapes and repetitive, matte colors combine to represent a deceivingly child-like aesthetic. I’m unsure whether this was meant to be the centerpiece of the exhibition, but it certainly felt like it. Bourgeois’ piece spread across at least ten feet of wall space. In fact, it is difficult to regard this piece as something whole when each page is laid out separately, frame by frame. In any case, the simplistic images resemble signs or motifs, lacking naturalistic rendering, but all the more powerful since the subject matter seems to be about loss, violence, and hatred.

I have been through awful things, as most humans living in our world have, and the honesty with which Bourgeois represents herself is chilling and admirable.

Louise Bourgeois' Ode a L'Oubli. 2004. and my face.

Kurland creates "The Good Life," in my opinion, with a world of adolescent and prepubescent school girls set free in an idyllic, pastoral setting. Staged and accidental join forces with fantasy and reality. We, the viewer, the peeper, are introduced to the private "girl world" before sex and the intrusion of men. Innocent intimacy is romanticized in this domain, free spirit takes hold. The girls in the image have lives uncomplicated by the opposite sex.

My favorite part of this image is the girls to the left playing a game with each other's feet. I haven't done something like this with my sister since we were very little, but upon viewing the girls playing, I was immediately brought back to a time before boyfriends, mental illness, and serious decisions.